Identifying forces on a tooth

Abstract

The present disclosure includes computing device related, systems, and methods for identifying force placed on a tooth are described herein. One method includes receiving initial orthodontic data (IOD) including teeth data; creating a virtual set of teeth from the IOD; receiving dental appliance information including at least one of dental appliance material properties and characteristics; virtually placing a dental appliance, formed from the dental appliance information, onto the virtual set of teeth; and determining one or more forces applied to the teeth based on information from the IOD and dental appliance information.

The invention claimed is: 
     
       1. A computing device implemented method of virtually identifying and testing force applied to teeth, comprising:
 determining, via the computing device, a target virtual dental model for an initial virtual dental model that is based on initial orthodontic data (IOD) of physical teeth; 
 generating, via the computing device, a treatment plan including a segmented path for virtual teeth from the initial virtual dental model to the target virtual dental model, each segment having a corresponding virtual dental appliance to move the virtual teeth to a subsequent segment; 
 displaying, on a graphical user interface, a representation of a force applied to the virtual teeth by the corresponding virtual dental appliance of a particular segment of the treatment plan and a virtual tooth surface feature on one of the virtual teeth, wherein the displayed representation includes one or more of a line, an arrow, and a vector associated with one or more characteristics of the force applied to the virtual teeth; 
 determining, via the computing device, a resulting configuration of the virtual teeth based on the force applied to the virtual teeth; 
 receiving, via the computing device, an adjustment to a shape or placement of the virtual tooth surface feature to improve the resulting configuration; 
 displaying, on the graphical user interface, a representation of a revised force applied to the virtual teeth by the corresponding virtual dental appliance and the virtual tooth surface feature after the adjustment; 
 determining, via the computing device, a resulting configuration of the virtual teeth based on the revised force applied to the virtual teeth; and 
 outputting, via an output interface, an identification of a placement of an actual feature, corresponding to the placement of the virtual tooth surface feature, on an actual tooth, corresponding to the one of the virtual teeth. 
 
     
     
       2. The method of  claim 1 , further including displaying a possible location where the virtual tooth surface feature can be placed on the one of the virtual teeth prior to receiving the adjustment. 
     
     
       3. The method of  claim 1 , further including presenting an editing tool for the corresponding virtual dental appliance in response to the determined resulting configuration of the virtual teeth being different than a configuration of the virtual teeth in the particular segment of the treatment plan. 
     
     
       4. The method of  claim 1 , further including illustrating the force applied to the virtual teeth by the corresponding virtual dental appliance on the initial virtual dental model and simultaneously illustrating a desired force on the initial virtual dental model. 
     
     
       5. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising displaying, on the graphical user interface, a representation of a force from neighboring virtual teeth. 
     
     
       6. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising displaying, on the graphical user interface, a representation of gingival force. 
     
     
       7. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising displaying, on the graphical user interface, a representation of force from virtual bone structures. 
     
     
       8. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising quantifying the force with respect to a single point of a virtual tooth. 
     
     
       9. The method of  claim 1 , further including identifying where the corresponding virtual dental appliance will stretch based on the force applied to the virtual teeth. 
     
     
       10. The method of  claim 1 , wherein the one or more characteristics includes one or more of a direction, a magnitude, a torque and a spatial relationship associated with the force with respect to the virtual teeth. 
     
     
       11. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising receiving, from a user, one or more parameters associated with the force and the revised force applied to the virtual teeth. 
     
     
       12. The method of  claim 11 , wherein the one or more parameters includes one or more of: a length of a tooth, a width of a tooth, a prominence of a tooth, a depth of a tooth, an activation angle, an activator offset on inactive surfaces, an iso-surface gradient width, a voxel size, a center of the corresponding virtual dental appliance, and an active surface. 
     
     
       13. The method of  claim 1 , wherein the virtual tooth surface feature includes one or more of an attachment, an anchor and an aligner surface feature on one of the virtual teeth. 
     
     
       14. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising dynamically adjusting a location of the virtual tooth surface feature on one of the virtual teeth based on user input.